I've been slacking on the blogging front for the St. Petersburg Chamber's Entrepreneurship Academy, and this is why: The past few classes were on topics I despise. They focused on sales, legal issues and accounting. The classes were sobering reminders of many painful mistakes I've made, and things I've overlooked, over the past several years.

Of course, it's human nature to avoid things we don't like. But for a business, though it might be possible to "get by" with minimal efforts on the sales/legal/accounting front, it's not likely that business will run efficiently or even be sustainable that way.

That might explain why early 2010, about halfway through LocalShops1 Year 2, I almost signed a document that might have put an end to my business; and why even by summer 2011, end of LocalShops1 Year 3, I was still scrambling to figure out how to pay for basic business expenses. This all while LocalShops1 was becoming increasingly popular, while we were winning awards for our advocacy efforts, while we were sponsoring high-profile community events and fundraisers.

Those were interesting times. As a community organization, we were very successful; as a business, we were barely hanging by.

So I'm writing all this to urge you to pay attention to all aspects of your business, even the ones you despise. It wasn't until I started doing so that I was actually able to sleep at night.

* * * * *

Back to the Entrepreneurship Academy, here are the speakers and the classes from the past few weeks:

Are
you leaving the corporate world to start your own business? Starting
over after a layoff? We want to hear your story! Please email us at
events@localshops1.com, and include your story and contact info. We will
try to include as many stories as possible in future blogs.

Ester
Venouziou, founder of LocalShops1, is available for freelance projects:
writing, editing, design or social media. She can be reached at
ester@localshops1.com or 727.637.5586